Godly boldness is not of ourselves, or inherent in our ethnic lineage, neither is it a character quality backed by force or violence, but rather is in and through Jesus Christ. Paul exhorts us to prayer. Our prayer is to be continuous, in the Holy Ghost, and with watchfulness and perseverance. It is to be prayer for all the saints, and will include our petitions and supplications, which are supporting, upholding, and asking the Lord for help for all the brethren. Then Paul adds, "and for me." Paul asked the believers to pray for himself, that he would be able to speak boldly. Think of it: Paul desires prayers for more boldness in his Gospel preaching! The one whom Scripture portrays as very bold by the Holy Ghost, seeks supplication by his fellow believers for even more boldness. Paul asks for prayers, that he might be able to make known the mystery of the Gospel. The Gospel is a mystery to the lost, for it is foolishness to them, and while they might understand it, they are unable to trust in it, or believe it unto salvation. Paul did reveal in his epistles the essential help required from the Holy Ghost, to cause the natural man to be able to understand and receive the things of God. Paul also explained how the Gospel operates to save lost men, by the satisfaction of God's justice against poor sinners, through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ in our place and for our crimes, imputed to Him by God. Christ's blood is the appeasement and satisfaction of God's wrath against us for our sins, and by faith we lay hold of that sacrifice, and God imputes to us Christ's righteousness, making us fit to come into the presence of our holy and infinitely powerful God!

At Iconium, bold Gospel preaching brought about the conversion of many Jews and Gentiles together. This preaching was done by Jewish believers to both Jews and Gentiles. But then, unbelieving Jews tried to shut down Paul's Gospel preaching! They poisoned the minds of some unbelieving Gentiles against Christ. Paul and the brethren didn't stop. For a long time, they continued to preach boldly the Gospel to all the people of Iconium. God honored their faithfulness by giving signs and wonders, to testify to the truth of what they were preaching, even under opposition by lost men. So the city was divided between Jews and Gentiles who believed in Christ, and those who opposed the Gospel. The unbelieving Jews and Gentiles assaulted Paul and other Christians, plotting to abuse and murder them, and trying to stop the spread of the Gospel. Notice the parallel with the murder of Jesus: recall how reprobate Jewish leaders co-opted the Roman tyrants to put our Savior to death on the cross! This cooperation between wicked Jews and Gentiles had been explained by Christ to His disciples beforehand. First, Jesus said, the Jewish rulers would corruptly condemn Him to death. Then secondly, they would turn Him over to the Roman governing authorities, to be mocked, beaten mercilessly, spit upon, and murdered by crucifixion. Sure enough, what Jesus described came to pass: the wicked Jewish leaders condemned Him to death, and the Romans carried it out at the cross. While initially crushed in spirit by this dreadful turn of events, the disciples, soon after Christ's resurrection, recalled that the Scriptures had foretold that lost Gentiles would believe on Jesus also!

Paul's boldness is explicitly credited to the work of the Holy Ghost. An example of Paul's boldness in Gospel preaching is seen in his powerful and provocative sermon at the synagogue in Antioch of Psidia. Paul points out that Jesus was the fulfillment of the promises to the house of David, and that Christ is the long-desired Savior. Not only that, but right here, right now, word of this salvation is preached to you! Paul forcefully asserts that the rulers of Israel falsely condemned the innocent Jesus to death, never realizing that the prophets foretold Christ's death in the place of His sinful people, dying for their sins laid upon Him by God! But the third day, God raised up Christ from the grave, vindicating Him before all the world! Paul then declares glad tidings to his listeners, mostly Jews, but some others as well in the synagogue that day, of how the promise of a Savior, made to the fathers, has been fulfilled by Christ being raised from the dead. Paul then exclaims, "be it known that through this Man, the Savior, is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins, and the justification of all those who believe on Him, from all things from which you cannot be justified by Moses' law! What Paul has described to these people that day was just that very work of God to provide salvation for His people, proven by the resurrection of Christ from the dead, and yet most of Paul's hearers rejected his preaching, and later tried to shut Paul down from ministry in their town. Indeed, the Gentiles caught wind of Paul's Gospel preaching, and desired Paul to preach it to them as well! A week later, almost the entire city was gathered to hear the good news Paul preached.

Regardless of what certain false teachers claim, as we have mentioned before, the Holy Ghost is powerful to sanctify every sort of believer, and suppress our character flaws for God's glory and our good, regardless of race. Paul's boldness is explicitly credited to the work of the Holy Ghost. He was bold in proclaiming the Gospel even when dangerous, followed by persecution, followed by Paul going elsewhere to preach. When Paul and Barnabas went to Paphos, the local minor ruler, Sergius Paulus, summoned Paul to hear the Gospel. Sergius' friend Barjesus, a sorcerer, interfered with the gospel work. No doubt this wicked man's income would be lost if his friend Sergius turned away from the devil's work and toward Christ. He needed to keep Sergius in Satan's thrall. Once again, Scripture tells us that it was the Holy Ghost in Paul that led him to denounce this wicked man to his face, as a child of the devil, an enemy of righteousness, and a perverter of the ways of the Lord! Then Paul called down judgment against the sorcerer, placing blindness upon him for a while. When Sergius saw what happened, he realized that the so-called "power" of his sorcerer friend was no match for the power of the Holy Ghost. All the benefits he supposed he had in his wicked friend, were worthless in the face of the truth of the gospel! Most people would have declined to confront the friend of the ruler, worrying that it would alienate him from the message, and perhaps even result in a violent reaction against the preacher. But not Paul. We see here a striking example of a boldness that could have been dangerous, but instead, the Spirit moved Sergius to believe the Gospel.

Godly boldness is not inherited, nor comes from some so-called noble or superior lineage. God can and does embolden His people, no matter how lowly or poor or disadvantaged they may be. We were all lost in sin and degradation and humiliation, until Christ cleansed us with His Own precious blood. He has saved us, and placed upon us His nobility and honor, and a portion of His boldness, by the Holy Ghost, for God's glory, and for our great benefit! The apostle Paul is a key example. He was very bold in his persecution of the Lord's people, but at that time he was aligned with the wicked power structure of Israel, the same one that murdered Messiah. But when Jesus confronted Paul on the road, Paul was struck blind. Ananias went to lay hands on Paul in Damascus, and not only was his sight restored, but he was filled with the Holy Ghost. Immediately Paul began preaching Christ's gospel, and that the Lord Jesus is God manifest in the flesh. This drove some of the local Jews into a rage, and they plotted to kill Paul, but Paul escaped over the wall and went to Jerusalem. Instead of piping down, and laying low, Paul started back up again, proclaiming the Lord Jesus, right there in the place where his former mentors and overseers were headquartered. They too plotted to kill Paul, so he left Jerusalem and went to Caesarea. This pattern repeated over and over throughout Paul's ministry: boldness in proclaiming the Gospel even though dangerous, followed by persecution, followed by Paul going elsewhere to preach. So we see that boldness and prudence are in no way incompatible. This is in keeping with Christ's instructions to His people during His ministry.

The Holy Ghost is powerful to sanctify every sort of believer, and suppress our character flaws for God's glory and our good, regardless of race. The Lord makes us brave by His providential care and through His Word to us, and by being with us always. God instructed Joshua to be strong and courageous, because God Himself would never leave Joshua nor forsake him. Paul quotes that same text in calling for the saints to exclaim, that the Lord is our helper, and we shall not fear what man can do to us. This Holy Ghost boldness was well displayed by the disciples from the very first. Joseph of Arimathea was bold to beg Pilate for the body of Jesus, so that He might receive the promised honorable burial in the tomb. Peter's boldness was evident in his confrontational preaching at Pentecost. When the Jewish rulers called Peter and John before the council to rebuke them for healing the lame man in the name of Jesus, they grew bolder still! Acts is clear why this is: because they were filled with the Holy Ghost. This is very striking in view of Peter's denial of Christ at the crucifixion. Peter had before talked big, but was cowed by the words of a servant girl. But now by the Holy Ghost, Peter did not mince words, but rather declared hard words, that he knew would rile up those wicked rulers who had murdered Messiah. Peter threw Christ's warning back into their faces: they had killed God's Son to try to seize the kingdom, rejecting the cornerstone, but God had raised up and exalted Christ to be the cornerstone anyway! Even the wicked rulers marveled that these ignorant and unlearned men had great boldness before them. But they took note, that they had been with Jesus!

The church is being polluted by a form of "our blood, our soil" extreme nationalism, that teaches that God gave America to Anglo Saxon Protestants, but all sorts of other people are invading our country and "ruining our heritage." These false teachers hold even Italians, Greeks, Jews, Hispanics, and Blacks as aliens, who should be excluded as far as possible from America. Often, they advocate discrimination and suppression, claiming a "spiritual basis" for these wicked notions. In the case at hand, the false teacher preaches that all blacks are under "the curse of Ham." But it turns out that Scripture never mentions a curse against Ham, but rather, a curse against one of his four sons, Canaan. Needless to say, Blacks do not descend from Canaan, so the curse against Canaan cannot be used to justify anti-black racism. Furthermore, this false teacher believes that Blacks ought to be made our servants, according to the terms of the imaginary curse of Ham! In fact, he teaches that the curse is actually a command for white people (which he claims are the "true sons of Japheth") to enforce the imaginary curse against Blacks! Meanwhile, he notes that the sons of Japheth were specially blessed by Noah in Genesis 9, which he supposes supports his view that white people are blessed and superior to the offspring of Ham and Shem. His false teaching on these matters is a mass of made up scripture, confusion, and circular argument that is unsupportable from Scripture. We obtain an insight into this false teacher's warped thinking and inability to grasp the logical contradictions of his beliefs, when we read one of his latest ideas.

The malevolent coverup of the resurrection began, even while the women went to tell the disciples the good news. The guards came into the city and told the chief priest and rulers everything that had happened. Think of it -- the rulers and priests' own employees told them the truth about the resurrection, even though as soldiers, their words put them in potential jeopardy. This is how we know that the chief priests and all the people that were there knew Christ had risen from the grave. They knew because the guards told them. But they hated Christ, and had murdered Messiah, and they weren't about to allow His claims to be vindicated by His own resurrection. So they paid the soldiers to lie, and say that the disciples stole Christ's body. The soldiers lied for them out of greed, and the rulers were determined to suppress Christ's work at all costs. They had already murdered Him, so what was a little bribery to spread lies to deny His resurrection? This is in concert with what the scriptures teach, that the natural man, that is, the man without the Holy Spirit, cannot receive the things that be of God, because they are foolishness to him, neither can he know them, for they are spiritually discerned. Having and believing the facts aren't enough without the Spirit's supernatural work in your mind and heart. Without the Spirit, you cannot receive it. You cannot rest in it. You cannot trust in it. So it was with the rulers. They hated Messiah. They murdered Messiah. And they were going to continue their anti-Messiah agenda all the way to the end, no matter what they actually knew to be true.